Laura Palucki Blake

This piece originally appeared in the April Newsletter for the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability. It’s a wonderful organization and resource for those of us committed to the assessment of student learning, and worth checking out. I’ve …

I’ve just returned from co-leading a workshop for the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS) with Jillian Kinzie. Ten schools had put together teams composed of an institutional researcher, a faculty member or faculty development person and someone from academic …

As we prepare to release the findings of the 2011 CIRP Freshman Survey on January 26th, the wheels are already well in motion for each of our 2012 surveys. I thought it might be worth it to preview some upcoming …

We are pleased to provide institutions with their results from the 2011 administration of the CIRP Freshman Survey. As institutions head to the portal (www.cirpsurveys.com) to retrieve their results, it is perhaps wise to provide a quick overview of what …

October is always an interesting time here at CIRP. The 2011 Freshman Survey has closed, and we are all anxiously awaiting the data file so we can, like the researchers we are, dig into the data and see what we …

Recently, I came across this open letter to creative professionals. In it, Pixar animator Austin Madison advises readers to work through the times when they are feeling uninspired—because it happens to everyone. As I read it, I thought to myself …

I have the good fortune of working with an extremely fun and creative group of people every day at CIRP. My colleagues and the graduate students are always coming across amazing research, people, and ideas that we share around the …

CIRP works with a broad range of institutions–small, large, private, public–but despite these differences, many schools share the same challenge–and that’s to get students to respond to surveys. Even schools that have good response rates, want better ones. With good …

Previously, when I have written about how to have a successful survey administration, I’ve focused on what can be done before and during an administration in order to ensure the best possible data. Now that many of you have your …